THE MEDIA BUSINESS

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Conde Nast Buys a Magazine; Will Alter Sports for Women

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: January 13, 1998

Conde Nast Publications Inc., publisher of Vogue and Architectural Digest, said yesterday that it would acquire Women's Sports + Fitness. The terms were not disclosed, but people involved in the deal put the purchase price at about $5 million.

The magazine, founded 25 years ago by Billie Jean King, is owned by John Winsor and Tim Borst, neither of whom returned calls seeking comment.

With the acquisition, Conde Nast, a unit of Advance Publications, will change the title of its four-month-old magazine, Conde Nast Sports for Women, a monthly, to Conde Nast Women's Sports and Fitness and will publish the reconfigured magazine six times a year, beginning this summer.

The acquisition and the cutback in the publishing schedule may signal some nervousness about the strength of the market. Conde Nast has $40 million riding on a bet that women want to read about snowboarding and boxing as well as beauty and fashion. Conde Nast may have decided to play it safer, remaking its magazine in the image of the other tried and true fitness titles.

''They're acknowledging that they're struggling with producing a magazine so heavily focused on women's sports,'' said John Heins, the president and chief executive of Gruner & Jahr, a unit of Bertelsmann A.G. that publishes the magazine Fitness.

But Steven T. Florio, the president and chief executive of Conde Nast, said the acquisition was simply a readjustment to requests from readers for more fitness information. In addition, there was some confusion among newsstand operators.

''We were having some difficulty explaining to retailers that Conde Nast Sports for Women should not be in the sports section of a newsstand, it should be with the women's magazines,'' Mr. Florio said. ''On one newsstand, it was next to wrestling magazine. It drove me nuts.''

As for the decision to publish fewer issues, Mr. Florio said, ''What we have found with the research with our first four issues is that sports, especially women's sports, is a very seasonal endeavor.''

Mr. Florio said Conde Nast's women's sports title would continue to guarantee advertisers a circulation of 350,000.

Women's Sports + Fitness, based in Boulder, Colo., has a circulation of 218,000 and is affiliated with the Women's Sports Foundation. The sale was handled by the investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc.